2012年6月17日星期日

World Accreditation Day 2012 Seminar

The World Accreditation Day (WAD) has marked on the 9 June. It is a global initiative jointly established by the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) to raise awareness of the importance of accreditation-related activities. The Hong Kong Council for Testing and Certification (HKCTC) and the Hong Kong Accreditation Service (HKAS) jointly held the seminar on 15 June 2012. The theme of WAD 2012 focuses on the role that accreditation plays in supporting the provision of safe food and clean drinking water.

Mr. W.W. Wong (Executive Administrator, HKAS) gave a welcoming remarks and presented souvenirs all guest speakers. Then they took a group photo.

Before the presentation, Mr. Wong showed The World Accreditation Day video. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIQC4_vCbN4)
The first speaker was Mr. W.W. Wong (Executive Administrator, HKAS) and his topic named "The Role of Accreditation in Supporting Food Safety". In the beginning, Mr. Wong mentioned recent different food incident included Malachite Green, Sudan Red, Melamine, Radioactive substances contamination and Phthalates, etc. Moreover, World Health Organization (WHO) considered food safety as a public health priority.

Then Mr. Wong explained the role of accreditation that ensured and improved the competence, confidence and credibility of conformity assessment activities. The definition of Accreditation was "third party attestation related to a conformity assessment body conveying formal demonstration of its competence to carry out specific conformity assessment tasks" (Clause 5.6 of ISO/IEC 17000:2004). He also introduced the schematic diagram of Accreditation in Hong Kong.

Mr. Wong briefed some HOKLAS/HKCAS Supplementary Criteria for Food such as HOKLAS SC-8, SC-21,SC-37 and HKCAS SC-6 for Competence, as well as HKAS SC-6 "Code of Conduct" for Credibility. He summaried new accreditation services in 2011 below.

Finally, Mr. Wong gave us a overview of HOKLAS accredited Food Test Labs (about 33 Labs) in different sectors. The first accredited Laboratory for food testing was Government Laboratory and it was granted on 14 March 1986. The other four WSD laboratories were accredited for drinking water testing. They are Mainland East Lab, Mainland West Lab, Pak Kong Lab and Tai Po Lab. At the end, Mr. Wong concluded that safe food and clean drinking water was ensured with the support of accreditation that improved public health, enhanced efficiencies in trade, reduced cost and increased consumer confidence.

The second speaker was Mr. Shinichi Iguchi (Chair, Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (PAC))and his presentation title was "Development of Accreditation and Certification Activities in Supporting Food Safety in PAC and Japan". Mr. Iguchi introduced PAC which established in 1995 and had 29 full members and 7 associate members today. PAC membership represented two thirds of the world's population.

PAC is an association of Accreditation Bodies for certification in the APEC member economies and other interested parties. Its objectives were to facilitate trade and commerce among economies in the Asia and/or Pacific region; and to create a global system that grants internationl recognition of certification or registration of management systems, products, services, personnel and other programs of conformity assessment.

The PAC Multilateral Recongnition Arrangement (MLA) is based on the equivalence of accreditation programs operated by accreditation body members, and verified through peer evaluation among them. PAC MLA program currently performed in the following three areas:
i) Quality Management System (15 members and 2 applicants)
ii) Environmental Management System (13 members and 2 applicants)
iii) Product Certification Systems (14 members and 4 applicants)
The following diagram showed some underdevelopment programs.

After that Mr. Iguchi shared the activities of food safety in Japan. Since Fukushima nuclear plant accident happened on 11 March 2011, the application/acceptance of accreditation for radioactivity testing laboratory was started on 1 May 2011 by Japan Accreditation Board (JAB), where 9 laboratories had accredited as of 22 May 2012. Following the accreditation scheme, the application/acceptance of proficiency test for radioactivity was on 16 June 2011 (55 participants). The certificate of food product which exported to Hong Kong was demonstrated.

Finally, Mr. Iguchi concluded the lesson learned from accreditation program was able to provide confidence, trust and assurance to the society.

The third speaker was Ms. Kwei Fern Chang (Chair, Asia Pacific Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (APLAC)) and her presentation was "How APLAC Support Trading of Safe Food Internationally". Ms. Chang described Global Trends first. With increasing consumer awareness and changing eating habits, there were growing demands for "Quality and Safe Food", "Confidence and Transparency", "Consistency and Predictability" and "Regulatory Compliance", etc.

Then Ms. Chang introduced the role of APLAC that was to enhance recognition of competent test and calibration facilities, inspection bodies and reference material producers and proficiency testing providers in the APEC region; as well as promotion of accreditation and MRA as a trade faciiltation tool. The diagram described how APLAC assisted to supervision the market through different accreditation.

The World Accreditation Structure for Laboratory and Inspection bodies were demonstrated. It showed the global mutual recognition could be achieved through arrangements of international (ILAC) and regional cooperations (e.g. APLAC, EA, IAAC, etc.).

Q&A section was started before tea break.

Dr. S.K. Wong was the forth speaker and his topic entitled "The Role of Metrology in Laboratory Accreditation". Dr. Wong briefed what is metrology and how it supported laboratory accreditation.

Dr. Wong introduced International metrological infrastructure which started from S.I. Units. In addition, Dr. Wong said mandatory requirements of Laboratory Accreditation among measurement traceability, method validation and proficiency testing programme.

Then he mentioned the traceability and reliability of Certified Reference Material. Proficiency Test (PT) scheme was introduced which external quality control measure for performance evaluation (using z-score). If PT using consensus value which subjected to participants' performance but the problem was the values obtained could not reflect "true values".

If PT using reference value which based on certified reference material, the distribution might be non-symmetrical.

Mr. T.Y. Choy was the fifth speaker and his presentation named "Clean Drinking Water in Hong Kong". Mr. Choy said about 70-80% raw water supplies from Dongjiang. Therefore, the Government of Hong Kong and Guangdong worked closely to protect the quality of Dongjiang water.

On-line continuous water quality monitoring system was introduced in which several parameters were measured such as ammonia, temp, conductivity, TDS, pH, etc. Moreover, GB3838-2002 "Environmental quality standards for surface water" was followed and there were 109 parameters.

There were 14 WSD laboratories and 4 radiation screening centres to monitor and control of treated water. Four laboratories (Mainland East Laboratory, Mainland West Laboratory, Pak Kong Laboratory and Tai Po Laboratory) had achieved HOKLAS accreditation. The diagram of milestone on HOKLAS and ISO 9001 was shown below.

Mr. Choy concluded that WSD committed to supplying the public with water that was clear, odourless, wholesome and free from pathogenic bacteria through stringent treatment and comprehensive quality monitoring and control.

The last speaker was Dr. K.S. Leung (Associate Director, Food Safety and Technology Research Centre, Hong Kong Polytechnic University) and his presentation was "Testing and Certification for Food Safety Control".

Dr. Leung said Principles of Food Safety Control included risk-based and science-based; and control through the food supply chain, as well as, Tripartite Collaboration among food trade, government and consumers. Moreover, laboratory accreditation was able to ensure reliability of test results.

Finally, Dr. Leung introduced his new research project for Food Hygiene Standard Certification System for Catering Industry. It was because some problems in implementing HACCP in Chinese restaurants. It was because HACCP was a principle and not a standard. Moreover, Chinese restaurants had large variety of food products and food processes.